Demographics, overall numbers move in right direction

The federal government reported slightly better numbers in
January for Obamacare’s once-troubled online marketplaces, but Ohio and
the nation still fall far short of key demographic goals.

For the first time since HealthCare.gov’s glitch-ridden rollout, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) numbers show the amount of new enrollees actually beat projections.
About 1,146,100 signed up for Obamacare in January, slightly higher
than the 1,059,900 previously projected by the Centers for Medicare and
Medicaid Services.

More importantly, a small boost in young adults means 25
percent of 3.3 million enrollees across the nation and 21 percent of
60,000 Ohio enrollees were aged 18 to 34. That’s up 1 percentage point
for the nation and 2 percentage points for Ohio.

The White House previously said 39 percent of enrollees
need to be young adults, who tend to be healthier, to avoid driving up
health care costs by filling the insurance pool with older, sicker
people who typically use more resources.

HHS’ numbers only reflect people who signed up for a
health plan, not people who paid for their first premium, which is
widely considered the final crucial step to getting covered.

Mayor explains initiatives as he prepares for meeting with president

Mayor John Cranley plans to address the city’s long-term unemployment problems with a set of new initiatives, some of which could get support from the White House, he told CityBeat Thursday.

One of the initiatives is in direct response to President Barack
Obama’s call, heard by millions during the State of the Union Tuesday,
to get private companies on board with ending discrimination against the
long-term unemployed.

Specifically, Cranley says he helped get Procter &
Gamble and other local companies to agree to join the president’s
initiative.

“It wasn’t that hard to sell them on it, but they've got a
lot of things going on,” Cranley says. “Getting their attention and
focus on these things is one of the great powers that I have. I can help
ask people to give back in ways they just haven’t thought of before.”

With a visit to the White House planned for Friday,
Cranley hopes his quick response to Obama’s call could help the city
land future federal grants for programs that address long-term
unemployment.

As an example, Cranley points to a new White House
initiative that asks cities to develop innovative pilot programs that help
the long-term unemployed. The initiative will award federal grants, which Cranley estimates at a couple million
dollars per city, to the 10 best
proposals.

In preparation, the city is partnering with several local
organizations, including the Workforce Investment Board and United Way
of Greater Cincinnati, to develop a unique plan. How the city’s proposal
looks ultimately depends on the constraints set by the application
requirements, but Cranley cited more educational opportunities and
subsidies for companies that hire the long-term unemployed as two examples
cities might undertake.

The proposal, however it looks, would come in addition to
Cranley’s Hand Up Initiative, which he plans to fund through this year’s
city budget. As part of the initiative, the city will first partner
with Cincinnati Cooks, Cincinnati Works and Solid Opportunities for
Advancement and Retention (SOAR) to provide more job training
opportunities. Participants who graduate from those programs can then
apply to the Transitional Jobs Program, which provides short-term,
part-time work opportunities to people as they look for long-term,
full-time jobs.

The initiative will begin as a pilot program for the first two years,
but it could eventually expand with more partnerships and job training
opportunities, according to Cranley.

If successfully carried out, Cranley’s proposals could help break the long-term unemployment trends that keep so many Americans jobless in the first place.

In one study, Rand Ghayad of Northeastern University sent
out 4,800 fake resumes for 600 job openings. Ghayad found people who had
been out of work for six months or more very rarely got called back, even in comparison to applicants without work experience who were unemployed for shorter periods of time.

In other words, diminishing the discrimination on the employer’s side or ongoing joblessness on the potential employee’s side could be enough to land more people in jobs.

A proper solution to the issue could also go a long way to picking up the nation’s sluggish job market. By the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ estimate,
nearly 38 percent of the unemployed in December had been unemployed for
27 weeks or longer — the highest rate in six decades. In comparison, the
rate was below 20 percent prior to the recession.

“In the end, we want a city that isn’t just good for
future residents,” Cranley says, referencing the economic momentum in
Over-the-Rhine, downtown and uptown that might benefit future
Cincinnatians. “We need a city solution that grows the capacity and
builds the opportunities for residents who are already here and families
that are already dealing with poverty.”

President Barack Obama delivered the State of the Union speech
yesterday, outlining an ambitious progressive agenda that will be largely ignored and rebuked by Congress. But Obama promised at least
seven major policies that he can pursue without legislators, including a
$10.10-per-hour minimum wage for federal contractors and some action on
global warming. Obama’s full speech is viewable here, and the
Republican response is available here. The Associated Press fact checked
the speech here.

Ky. Gov. Steve Beshear says tolls are necessary to fund
the $2.6 billion Brent Spence Bridge project. Officials and executives
claim the bridge replacement is necessary to improve safety, traffic and
economic development through a key connector between Kentucky and Ohio,
but many Kentucky officials refuse to accept tolls to fund the new
bridge. But without federal funding to pay for the entire project,
leading Ohio and Kentucky officials say they have no other option.

There is a 32-point achievement gap in reading between
Ohio’s lower-income and higher-income fourth-graders, with higher-income
students coming out on top. The massive gap speaks to some of the
challenges brought on by income inequality as Ohio officials implement
the Third-Grade Reading Guarantee, which requires most Ohio
third-graders to test as “proficient” before they advance to the fourth
grade. Previous studies also found Ohio’s urban schools might be
unfairly evaluated and under-funded because the state doesn’t properly
account for poverty levels.

Attempting to move the Hamilton County Board of Elections
offices from downtown to Mount Airy, where only one bus line runs, could provoke a lawsuit from the NAACP, Board Chairman Tim Burke, a Democrat
who opposes the move, warned in an email to county commissioners. With
the Board of Elections split along party lines on the issue, the final
decision to move or not to move could come down to county commissioners
or Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted. CityBeat covered the issue in further detail here.

The reasoning: Because young adults tend to be healthier,
they can keep premiums down as sicker, older people claim health
insurance after the law opens up the health insurance market to more Americans.

Roughly 19 percent of nearly 40,000 Ohioans who signed up for Obamacare
were young adults between the ages of 18 and 34, according to the
report. Not only does that fall below the 39 percent goal, but it also
lags behind the national average of 24 percent.

In defense of the demographic numbers, HHS Secretary
Kathleen Sebelius wrote in a blog post Monday that enrollments are
demographically on pace with the 2007 experience of Massachusett, where state officials implemented health care reforms and systems similar to
Obamacare through Romneycare.

Indeed, a report from The New Republic found just
22.6 percent of enrollees through the third month of Romneycare were young adults. That number rose to 31.7
percent by the end of the law’s first year.

If Obamacare ends up at Massachusetts’ year-end rate, it will still
fall behind goals established by the White House. Still, Obamacare would be in
a considerably better place than it finds itself today.

The disappointing demographic figure comes after months of
technical issues snared HealthCare.gov’s launch. Most of the issues
were fixed in December, which allowed Obamacare to report considerably
better enrollment numbers by the end of the year.

It’s also unclear how many of those signing up for
Obamacare actually paid for their first premium, which is the final step to becoming enrolled in a health
insurance plan.

Given how Romneycare worked out in Massachusetts, it’s
possible signups for Obamacare could pick up before open enrollment
closes at the end of March. Based on previous statements from the White
House, Obamacare’s success could depend on it.

Ohio charter school have largely failed to live up to their promises, according to The Columbus Dispatch.
Charter schools were originally pursued by Ohio
lawmakers to help find a suitable alternative to the state’s struggling
urban public schools. But in the latest school report cards, charter
schools performed just as poorly as urban public schools. Charter
schools are allowed to run a profit and skip on certain state rules and
regulations, which was supposed to give them some leniency in
implementing successful academic models.

Obamacare will lower average health care costs
in Ohio’s individual market, according to a study from RAND
Corporation, a reputable think tank. Although premiums will rise as a
result of the law, the tax credits offered in Obamacare will be more
than enough to offset the increases. The numbers only apply to the
individual marketplaces; anyone who gets insurance through an employer
or public program falls under different rules and regulation. Still, the
findings are good news for Obamacare as the federal government aims to
insure 7 million people — and 2.7 million young, healthy adults among
those — to make the individual marketplaces work. As part of Obamacare,
states and the federal government will open online enrollment for new,
subsidized individual insurance plans on Oct. 1, and the plans will go
into effect at the start of next year.

The Medicaid expansion could insure more than 42,000 people in Hamilton County,
according to the Ohio Poverty Law Center. As part of Obamacare, states
are asked to expand their Medicaid programs to include anyone at or
below 138 percent of the federal poverty level ($15,856 for a
single-person household). If states accept, the federal government will
pay for the entire expansion for the first three years then phase down
its payments indefinitely to 90 percent of the expansion’s total cost.
Earlier this year, the Health Policy Institute of Ohio released an analysis
that found the Medicaid expansion would insure nearly half a million
Ohioans and save the state about $1.8 billion in the next decade.

Gov. John Kasich says he wants to slow down Attorney General Mike DeWine’s facial recognition program
and work with the Ohio legislature to review if changes are necessary.
Kasich compared the program to federal surveillance programs like the
NSA and FISA, which have come under scrutiny in the past few months
after leaks unveiled broader snooping and data collection of Americans’
private communications than previously expected. The facial recognition
program allows police officers and civilian employees to use a photo to
search databases for names and contact information; previously, law
enforcement officials needed a name or address to search such databases.
The program was criticized by the American Civil Liberties Union
because knowledge of the program’s existence was withheld from the
public for two-plus months and an independent group never reviewed the
program’s privacy-protecting protocols.

Democratic City Council candidate Greg Landsman backed the second phase of the streetcar in a column Friday. The endorsement could be vital to the project’s future because Landsman is widely considered a favorite in this year’s City Council race.

JobsOhio’s leaders plan to launch a public relations offensive
to repair the agency’s image. The privatized
development agency has been criticized for its lack of transparency after media outlets uncovered that it was handing
out tax credits to companies with direct financial ties to JobsOhio
board members. Democrats argue the agency needs more transparency and
checks on its recommendations, while Republicans, who created the agency
to replace the Ohio Department of Development, claim the agency’s
privatized, secretive nature allows it to move more quickly with
job-creating development deals.

The University of Cincinnati was named public university of the year
by The Washington Center. The award recognizes UC for supporting
experiential education through its partnership with The Washington
Center, an independent academic organization that serves hundreds of
colleges and universities by providing internships and other
opportunities in Washington, D.C., for school credit.

Cincinnati-based Kroger is cutting health care benefits for employees’ spouses on Jan. 1, but the plan will also increase pay, stabilize the company’s pension fund and provide more benefits for part-time employees. Obamacare apparently played a role in the decision to cut spousal benefits, but Kroger says the most influential factor was rising health care costs all around the nation — a trend that has been ongoing for decades.

Here is
a visualization of the urban heat island effect, which will make cities
warm up much faster as global warming continues.

Could you survive the end of the universe? io9 tackles the question here.

Individuals’ premiums will rise, but tax credits will more than make up for the increase

The Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) will lead to an
increase in Ohio’s raw health care premiums, but the increase will be
more than offset by the law’s tax credits, according to an Aug. 29 study from the RAND Corporation, a reputable think tank.

Specifically, health care premiums will rise to an average
of $5,312 under Obamacare in 2016. Without the law, premiums would
reach an average of $3,973 that year.

But when Obamacare’s tax credits are plugged in, the
average Ohio individual will only pay a premium of $3,131 — $842 less
than an individual Ohioan would pay without the law.

The tax credits will be available to individuals between 100 percent ($11,490 in annual income) and 400 percent of the federal poverty level ($45,960 in annual income). The subsidies will be smaller for
higher income levels, and the raw premium will vary depending on the insurance plan, so the premium and subsidy numbers don’t apply perfectly across the board.

The numbers also only apply to Ohioans in the individual
health insurance market. Under Obamacare, individuals will be able to
enroll for health insurance through an online marketplace. The majority of Americans who get health insurance through their
employers or public programs fall under different rules and regulations.

Obamacare will help more non-elderly Ohioans get health insurance. Without the law, 14.9 percent of
non-elderly individuals would lack insurance. With the law, only 6.2
percent will go without insurance.

RAND attributes the difference in insurance rates to tax credits, which make health insurance more affordable, and the individual
mandate, which requires certain Americans buy health insurance or pay a fine.

The numbers are good news for Obamacare, which needs a certain amount of young adults to enroll to avoid causing health care costs to skyrocket. Federal officials
say they expect to enroll 7 million people through individual
marketplaces, but 2.7 million must be young adults. That’s because
young adults tend to be healthier, which will help balance out sicker, older
people flowing into health care plans.

The online marketplaces are supposed to open enrollment on Oct. 1. The actual plans will go into effect on Jan. 1.

The White House released a list
of what cuts will be made in Ohio as part of mandatory spending cuts
set to kick in March 1, which are widely known as the sequester. Among other
changes, 26,000 civilian defense employees would be furloughed, 350
teacher and aide jobs would be put at risk due to $25.1 million in
education cuts and $6.9 million for clean air and water enforcement would
be taken away. President Barack Obama and Democrats have pushed to
replace the sequester with a plan that contains tax changes and budget
cuts, but they’ve failed to reach a compromise with Republicans, who
insist on a plan that only includes spending cuts.

Community Council President David White told WVXU that the
streets and sidewalks of the long-neglected neighborhood of Pendleton
were previously crumbling, but the Horseshoe Casino’s development has helped transform the area.
With Tax Increment Financing (TIF) funds, the city has budgeted $6
million in neighborhood development that has led to new trees, expanded
sidewalks and the potential for further developments that will appeal to
new businesses.

A surprise inspection
of the private prison owned by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA)
on Feb. 22 revealed higher levels of violence, inadequate staff, high
presence of gang activity, illegal substance use, frequent extortion and
theft, according to the report from the Correctional Institution
Inspection Committee (CIIC), Ohio’s nonpartisan prison watchdog. The
CIIC report found enormous increases in violence, with a 187.5-percent
increase in inmate-on-inmate violence and 305.9-percent in
inmate-on-staff violence between 2010 and 2012. Many of the problems are
being brought on by inadequate staff, according to the report. The
findings echo much of what privatization critics have been warning about
ever since Gov. John Kasich announced his plans to privatize the state
prison in 2011, which CityBeat covered in-depth here.

Kasich has highlighted funding increases in the education plan in his 2014-2015 budget proposal, but the plan also includes looser requirements for Ohio’s schools.
The plan will remove the teacher salary schedule from law, which sets a
minimum for automatic teacher pay increases for years of service and
educational accomplishments, such as obtaining a master’s degree. It
would also change the minimum school year from 182 days to 920 hours for
elementary students and 1,050 for high school students, giving more
flexibility to schools. CityBeat took an in-depth look at the governor’s budget and some of its education changes here.

Ohio Democrats want to change how the state picks its watchdog.
The governor currently appoints someone to the inspector general
position, but Democrats argue a bipartisan panel should be in charge of
making the pick.

Mayor Mark Mallory is in Spain to meet with CAF, the
company constructing the cars for Cincinnati’s streetcar project. Streetcar opponents, including mayoral candidate John
Cranley, say the cars are being built too early, but the city says it needs the time to build the cars, test them, burn the tracks and
train staff in the cars’ use. CityBeat covered the streetcar and how it relates to the 2013 mayoral race here.

The amount of Ohio prisoners returning to prison after being released hit a new low of 28.7 percent in 2009.
The numbers, which are calculated over a three-year period, indicate an
optimistic trend for the state’s recidivism statistics even before Gov. John
Kasich’s sentencing reform laws were signed into law.

Cincinnati’s real estate brokers say the city manager’s parking plan will revitalize Downtown’s retail scene
by using funds from semi-privatizing Cincinnati’s parking assets to
renovate Tower Place Mall and build a 30-story apartment tower with a
parking garage and grocery store.

Media musings from Cincinnati and beyond

• Giovanna Chirri, the veteran Vaticanista who understood
the pope’s Latin, broke the news that he’d just announced his
resignation. She works for the Italian news agency, ANSA. Her skill
recalled Ernest Sackler at Rome’s UPI bureau when I was a
photojournalist stringer during John XXIII’s papacy. Ernest truly
understood Vatican Latin well enough to turn it into flowing English;
colleagues spoke of him with awe.

• I’m grateful to the Enquirer for running a story on Sen.
Rand Paul’s response to the State of the Union Message. It wasn’t on
NPR or any other network that I could find. His Washington office did
not respond to my question of whether the Kentucky Republican offered his
remarks to any broadcasters/cable networks.

• Tens of millions of Americans will become eligible for
subsidized medical care under Obama’s Affordable Care Act. Who’s going
to treat them? I haven’t seen that in the news. And while reporters are
working out that story, ask how the required additional primary care
physicians will pay off college and medical school debts on the salaries
that will be paid to their specialties.

• And once journalists dig into the supply of physicians
to handle Medicaid expansion, I hope they’ll ask who’s going to staff
quality preschool education for every American child. Obama can be
aspirational, but we’re not talking about minimum wage diaper changers.
Early learning centers require trained pre-school educators. And while
they’re at it, reporters should ask where these new early childhood
educators will train and who’s going pick up the tab. After all, they’ll
never repay college loans on day care wages.

• Maybe I missed it in the admiring coverage of our
government killing American Islamists abroad with drone rocket attacks: What prevents Obama from killing Americans in this country with drone
strikes? None of the news stories or commentaries I’ve read or heard
addressed that point.

There would be no shortage of targets. Wouldn’t the
sheriff have loved a drone-launched missile to kill Christopher Dorner,
the rogue ex-LAPD cop? That might have spared the deputy whom Dorner
killed during the flaming finale in the San Bernardino mountains. And
what prevents our increasingly militarized police from using their own
armed drones?

Imagine what authorities could have done with armed drones during earlier, infamous encounters:

A missile fired at armed members of the American Indian
Movement at Wounded Knee, S.D., could have avenged inept, vain
and foolish George Armstrong Custer and FBI agents killed in the 1973
siege.

No feds would have died if a drone-launched missile
incinerated Randy Weaver’s family with during its deadly 1992
confrontation with feds at Ruby Ridge, Idaho.

David Koresh and the Branch Davidian religious sect were
incinerated by the feds’ 1993 armored assault in Texas. That would have
been a perfect photo op for a domestic drone attack.

• Sometimes, “national security” is the rationale for requested or commanded self-censorship, even when secrets aren’t secret.

For instance, British editors held stories about Prince
Harry until he returned the first time from Afghanistan. However, an
Australian women’s magazine reported he was in combat. The non-secret
was a secret because no one paid attention.

More recently, the new U.S. drone base in Saudi Arabia was
supposed to be a secret. Obama officials asked major news media to hold
the story and they agreed. National security, you know.

But it wasn’t a secret. Washington Post blogger Erik
Wemple said Fox News already had reported U.S. plans to build the
facility in Sept. 2011. Three months before that, the Times of
London reported construction of the Saudi drone base.

When the New York Times broke the agreement and reported
the Saudi drone base, everyone jumped on the story. Now, the Times, the
Post and AP are trying to explain why they kept the non-secret from us.

• Gone are the days when senior Israeli government
officials could call in top editors and broadcasters and tell them what
they could not report. Last week, a tsunami of technology overwhelmed
official Israeli efforts to censor the story of Prisoner X. Israeli
journalists were not to report his existence or mention the censorship
order. National security, you know. However, an Australian network named
an Aussie as Prisoner X and said he reportedly committed suicide three
years ago in an Israeli prison. Social media and the online world took
it from there: "Aussie recruited by Israeli spy agency dies in Israeli
prison." Israel dropped efforts to censor the Prisoner X story and is
issuing official statements about the case.

• San Bernardino’s sheriff asked journalists to quit
tweeting from the final gunfight with former LAPD cop Christopher
Dorner. Bizarre. If authorities feared Dorner would gain tactical
information, they misread his situation: Dorner was surrounded in a
mountain cabin, tear gas was being lobbed in and men outside were
trying to shoot him. He probably was too busy to read tweets. Moreover,
only one reporter was close enough to tweet anything remotely useful to
anyone. Most reporters initially or finally ignored the sheriff.

The tweet issue first arose during the 2008 Muslim
terrorist attack on Mumbai when invaded the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. Some
authorities reportedly feared accomplices outside were reading news
media tweets and forwarding tactical information about police and army
movements to gunmen inside. I don’t remember if anyone asked reporters
to quit tweeting.

• A new poll says Fox hit an alltime low for the four
years Public Policy Polling has tracked trust/distrust among TV
networks: 41 percent trust Fox, 46 percent do not. The poll didn’t find anything for
other networks to brag about. Only PBS had more “trust” than “distrust”
among viewers: 52 percent trust, 29 percent don’t trust. The poll questioned 800
voters by telephone from Jan. 31 to Feb. 3.

• Garry Wills’ new book, Why Priests, sets out to debunk
Catholicism’s dearest dogmas and doctrines concerning priests, bishops
and the papacy. NPR’s Diane Rehm gave him an hour last week to say why
Catholic ordained clergy are an unnecessary accretion. Then she asked an
outgunned parish priest from the Washington, D.C. area for a rebuttal.
If she really wanted a lively, informed argument, there is no shortage
of priest-scholars who could have matched Wills’ credentials and talents
as an historian. It was unfair and cringe-worthy.

• It’s touchy when an unpleasantry is brought up in an
obit: a long forgiven conviction, a “love child,” whatever. More often,
predictably awkward moments are omitted in the spirit of de mortuis nil
nisi bonum. Here’s HuffingtonPost on a full-blown omission in the recent
obit on former New York mayor and mensch Ed Koch:

“The New York Times revised its Friday obituary
. . . after several observers noticed that it lacked any mention of his
controversial record on AIDS. The paper's obituary, written by longtime
staffer Robert D. MacFadden, weighed in at 5,500 words. Yet, in the
first version of the piece, AIDS was mentioned exactly once, in a
passing reference to ‘the scandals and the scourges of crack cocaine,
homelessness and AIDS.’ The Times also prepared a 22-minute video on
Koch's life that did not mention AIDS. This struck many as odd; after
all, Koch presided over the earliest years of AIDS, and spent many years
being targeted
by gay activists who thought he was not doing nearly enough to stop the
spread of the disease. Legendary writer and activist Larry Kramer called Koch ‘a murderer of his own people’ because the mayor was widely known as a closeted gay man.”

• New York’s Ed Koch admired Wall Street Journal reporter
Danny Pearl’s recorded last words before Muslim terrorists beheaded him.
Koch had Pearl’s affirmation of faith engraved on his own tombstone in
Manhattan’s Trinity Church graveyard: “My father is Jewish, my mother is
Jewish, I am Jewish.”

• A former student reporter rarely rates an obit in the
national media, but Annette Buchanan wasn’t ordinary. In the mid-1960s,
she refused a court order to name sources for her story about student
marijuana use on the University of Oregon campus. Her story ran in the
Oregon Daily Emerald, the campus paper. No shield law protected her
promise of confidentiality. The Emerald said she was fined the maximum
$300 and the state supreme court affirmed her contempt of court
conviction. That led to the creation of Oregon’s shield law for
journalists. She died recently.

• An unresolved First Amendment issue is whether bloggers
can be protected by state shield laws that allow journalists to keep
sources secret. The latest case is from New Jersey. Poynter.com
said blogger Tina Renna refused to identify government officials whom
she said misused county generators after Hurricane Sandy. Union County
prosecutors demanded the 16 names, saying Renna wasn’t a journalist
protected by New Jersey’s shield law because she’s been involved in
politics, her blog is biased and she’s often critical of county
government.

The Newark Star-Ledger took her side. It said shield law protection “shouldn’t
hinge on whether someone is a professional, nonpartisan or even
reliable journalist. It’s a functional test: Does Renna gather
information that’s in the public interest and publish it? Yes.” Renna “can
be a little wild, she’s not the same as a professional reporter and she
drives local officials crazy. But part of democracy is putting up with
Tina Renna.” A court will probe whether Renna is a journalist as defined
by the state shield law; that is, whether bloggers can be included by
analogy under protected electronic news media.

• Few ledes — introductory sentences in news stories — are
as lame as those saying the subject “doesn’t look” like some
stereotype. For years, it usually referred to a woman in an
unconventional (read men’s) occupation or pastime. “She didn’t look
like a steelworker . . . “ or, “You wouldn’t think a tiny blonde bagged a
deadly wild boar with a huge .44 magnum revolver.” Male subjects aren’t
immune, as in this lede from a recent Washington Post story: “Farmer
Hugh Bowman hardly looks the part of a revolutionary who stands in the
way of promising new biotech discoveries and threatens Monsanto’s
pursuit of new products . . . ”

What do revolutionaries look like? Lenin was pictured in
suit and tie. Gandhi wore a white, draped sari or dhoti, Mandela and
fellow ANC rebels often wore suits and ties. Young 1960s American and
French student rebels never wore suits and ties and needed haircuts.
Today’s young North African activists dress the same for class or a
demonstration.

“Doesn’t look like” wouldn’t even fit an androgynous male
model in the annual Victoria’s Secret fashion show. He’d be there
because he looks like a classic, young, leggy “angel.”

• Have you noticed how hurricanes, floods, blizzards and
tornadoes are morphing from evidence of climate change into photo ops?
News media see them as so common that little reporting is required
beyond images and stories of hardship: shoppers hoarding sliced white
bread, downed trees and shattered homes, marooned airline passengers and
days without power. Maybe there’s the throwaway quote from some
climatologist about change affecting weather, but for the most part,
that’s it. I’m betting this deliberate ignorance is a Republican Party
plot to show that increasingly frequent, dangerous weather reflects the
Intelligent Design that gave us dino-riding cavemen a few thousand years
ago.

• The Enquirer devoted Page 1 to a dramatic OMG! graphic
and story suggesting Cincinnati was terrible because it had no black
candidate for mayor. An accompanying list of movers and shakers had few
blacks. The presentation suggested the all-white mayoral contest meant
amiss in a city where whites are the largest minority. However, whites
and blacks told reporters that leadership rather than color was foremost
among attributes they sought in a mayor. Moreover, with so many African
Americans in visible leadership roles in the city, having a black mayor
succeed a black mayor was less of an issue than the paper suggested.

President Barack Obama gave his State of the Union speech
yesterday. During the speech, Obama outlined fairly liberal proposals for the economy, climate change, gun control and immigration. He also suggested raising the minimum wage to $9 and attaching it to rising cost of living standards. The Washington Post analyzed the proposals here. To watch a bunch of old people clap too much while the
president outlines policy proposals that will likely never pass a
gridlocked Congress, click here.

The Archdiocese of Cincinnati is standing firm
in its firing of Purcell Marian High School administrator Mike Moroski.
The termination came after Moroski publicly stated his support for
same-sex marriage on his blog — a position that contradicts the Catholic
Church’s teachings. CityBeat covered Moroski’s case in this week’s news story, and gay marriage was covered more broadly in a previous in-depth story.

Vice Mayor Roxanne Qualls wants to stop
the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) from selling
768 housing units in Walnut Hills, Avondale and Millvale. Qualls says
the sale is “eerily similar” to a sale dating back to 2007, which
resulted in dropping property values and blighted buildings. She argues local buyers should get a chance to take up the properties before HUD makes the sale to a New York company.

State Treasurer Josh Mandel is up to his old tricks again. In a letter to Ohio legislators Monday, Mandel, a Republican, opposed the Medicaid expansion,
claiming, “There is no free money.” But for the state, the Medicaid
expansion is essentially free money. The federal government will cover
all the costs of the expansion for the first three years, then phase down to paying 90 percent of the costs by 2020 — essentially, free
money. Gov.
John Kasich, another Republican, has backed the Medicaid expansion, claiming it makes
financial sense in the long term. In 2012, Mandel lost the race for Ohio’s Senate seat after he ran
a notoriously dishonest campaign against U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown.

Financing details for the Brent Spence Bridge are due in March.
The details will provide much-wanted information for local residents
cautious about the new tolling scheme, which will help pay for the bridge’s
reconstruction.

Cincinnati officials and residents celebrated
the work completed near the Horseshoe Casino at an event yesterday.
Mayor Mark Mallory highlighted the infrastructure improvements made to
accommodate the casino, calling the work a successful collaboration
between city government, the casino and residents.

The Ohio Resource Center has a new website for K-12 digital content. The website, ilearnOhio, is supposed to provide parents and students with the tools needed for online distance learning.

Toby Keith’s I Love This Bar & Grill is being sued
for not paying rent. The restaurant claims it’s financially viable, but
it’s holding the rent in escrow after its landlord allegedly violated the
leasing agreement. The establishment was one of the first to open at
The Banks.

A public Ohio school district is fighting a lawsuit in order to keep its portrait of Jesus.
The school district claims the portrait is owned by a student club and
is “private speech,” but opponents argue the portrait violates
separation of church and state.

Update on the Alamo situation at Tower Place Mall: Only one tenant remains.

Americans expect a human mission to Mars in the next 20 years, but that’s probably because they don’t know how little funding NASA gets.

An asteroid will barely miss
Earth on Feb. 15. If it were to hit, it would generate the explosive
equivalent of 2,500 kilotons of TNT. In comparison, the nuclear bomb
that hit Hiroshima during World War 2 generated a measly equivalent of
17 kilotons of TNT.

Media musings from Cincinnati and beyond

Be suspicious of statistics that suggest a reporter
doesn’t understand, doesn’t care or knowingly isn’t telling us
everything the numbers do. For instance, we have tens of thousands of
firearm deaths every year in our country. Uncritical reporting suggests
these are homicides that buybacks or proposed federal gun controls could
prevent or reduce. Nope. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
said there were 31,672 firearm deaths recorded in 2010, the last year
for which complete statistics are posted. Of those, 19,392 or 61 percent
were suicides, not homicides. The remaining 39 percent included accidents, fatal encounters with police, etc.

• Critical thinking was in short supply at the Senate
Judiciary Hearing where gun control foes testified. It’s sort of like
using a faux quote by Hitler to prove gun registration leads to
confiscation, which leads to socialism or worse. Gayle Trotter of the
Independent Women’s Forum told senators that “guns make women safer” and
a ban on assault-style weapons with high-capacity magazines would
endanger women.

To illustrate her case, Trotter cited 18-year-old Sarah
McKinley’s successful defense against an armed intruder near Blanchard,
Okla. Police there told CityBeat that she killed him with a
12-gauge pump shotgun, a classic hunting weapon owned by millions of
Americans. That was a good choice for McKinley but an unfortunate
example for Trotter; no one is suggesting that shotguns be included in
proposed gun controls.

Then, as if to prove that fewer Americans are hunting or
serving in the military and know what they’re talking about (also see
below), MSNBC mistakenly said she used a rifle. ABC News was no smarter:
It had her reenact the shooting with a double-barreled shotgun.

McKinley’s single-barrel pump shotgun was taken as
evidence in the homicide, probably to be returned when her claim of
self-defense is affirmed. Meanwhile, Guns Save Lives, a nonprofit, sent
her a similar, replacement shotgun.

Not only does Oklahoma allow lethal force for self-defense
inside a person’s home, but McKinley asked the 911 operator what she
could do to protect herself and her child. The dead intruder’s companion
reportedly told police the intruders were after prescription
painkillers that they assumed McKinley’s husband left when he died a
week earlier from cancer.

• A secret shooter? After Obama’s comments to the New
Republic about having fired a gun, the White House released a photo of
the president on the Camp David retreat skeet range. Wearing protective
glasses and ear protection, he’s firing a shotgun at the 4-5/16 inch
flying clay discs (pigeons) last August. "Yes, in fact, up at Camp David, we do skeet shooting all the time," Obama told the New Republic. "Not the girls, but oftentimes guests of mine go up there." However, the AP story accompanying the skeet shooting photo in Sunday’s Enquirer
mistakenly says he’s firing a rifle. I’m not sure whether Obama used an
over-and-under shotgun, but it certainly didn’t look like a rifle. That
inexplicable clanger escaped AP and Enquirer editing despite our
unprecedented national debate over certain types of firearms. NRA
pooh-poohed Obama’s comments and photo, saying it changes nothing in NRA
opposition to greater gun control.

• John Kerry drew scorn in 2004 after he was photographed
with Ted Strickland and others with just-shot geese in an eastern Ohio
cornfield. Possibly recalling that ill-conceived effort to bond with
hunters, Obama didn’t release his skeet shooting photo before the
election last year. Kerry’s goose hunting was ridiculed as a dumb photo
op, especially because Kerry borrowed the farmer’s hunting outfit and
double-barreled shotgun for the day. Whether Kerry bagged any additional
rural voters was unclear; Bush won Ohio.

• I began contributing to the new National Catholic Reporter in the mid-’60s when I started covering religion at the Minneapolis Star. I freelanced for NCR when I had that same assignment at the Enquirer. A privately owned, independent weekly based in Kansas City, Mo., NCR was a voice of Roman Catholics who embraced the spirit as well as the documents of the Second Vatican Council.

Traditional churchmen had little reason to love NCR.
It was a pain in the ass and collection basket. It reported the flight
of clergy and nuns, often into marriage. Jason Berry pioneered reporting
of priestly child abuse. Penny Lernoux covered Latin American death
squads and links between murderous reactionaries and the church. Murders
of nuns, priests and bishops who embraced liberation theology and the
church’s “preferential option for the poor” received extensive, probing
coverage.

The bishop of Kansas City and a former diocesan editor,
Robert W. Finn, recently joined predecessors’ fruitless condemnations of
NCR’s journalism. In a letter to the diocese praising official
church media, Finn was “sorry to say, my attention has been drawn once
again to the National Catholic Reporter. … In the last months I
have been deluged with emails and other correspondence from Catholics
concerned about the editorial stances of the Reporter: officially
condemning Church teaching on the ordination of women, insistent
undermining of Church teaching on artificial contraception and sexual
morality in general, lionizing dissident theologies while rejecting
established Magisterial (official) teaching, and a litany of other
issues.

“My predecessor bishops have taken different approaches to
the challenge. Bishop Charles Helmsing in October of 1968 issued a
condemnation of the National Catholic Reporter and asked the publishers to remove the name ‘Catholic’ from their title — to no avail. From my perspective, NCR’s positions against authentic Church teaching and leadership have not changed trajectory in the intervening decades.

“When early in my tenure I requested that the paper submit their bona fides
as a Catholic media outlet in accord with the expectations of Church
law, they declined to participate indicating that they considered
themselves an ‘independent newspaper which commented on “things
Catholic.” ’ At other times, correspondence has seemed to reach a dead
end.

“In light of the number of recent expressions of concern, I
have a responsibility as the local bishop to instruct the Faithful
about the problematic nature of this media source which bears the name
‘Catholic.’ While I remain open to substantive and respectful discussion
with the legitimate representatives of NCR, I find that my ability to
influence the National Catholic Reporter toward fidelity to the
Church seems limited to the supernatural level. For this we pray: St.
Francis DeSales (patron of journalists), intercede for us.”

• Rarely have I seen such a neat dismissal of creationism
and defense of evolution as the following by 19th century skeptic Robert
Ingersoll. It’s quoted in a review of The Great Agnostic, a biography of Ingersoll, in the neo-conservative Weekly Standard:

“I would rather belong to that race that commenced a
skull-less vertebrate and produced Shakespeare, a race that has before
it an infinite future, with an angel of progress leaning from the far
horizon, beckoning men forward, upward, and onward forever — I had
rather belong to such a race … than to have sprung from a perfect pair
upon which the Lord has lost money every moment from that day to this.”

• The Weekly Standard also published “A teacher’s
Plea: The GOP shouldn’t write off educators.” Eloquent Colleen Hyland
speaks beyond partisanship for her vocation and colleagues in her Jan.
21 essay. Among other things, she hopes to shake Republican/conservative
ideologues out of their animus toward public school teachers and their
unions. Among her points: Hhateful generalizations about teachers and
their desire for a living wage also degrades women.

• I didn’t know Kevin Ash and I’m not a rider but I read his motorcycle reviews in London’s Daily Telegraph
for years. Details of his death in South Africa are unclear, but he
died during the media show testing the new BMW R1200GS motorcycle. His
informed, passionate writing was a delight for itself, even if I never
thought to get on a two-wheeler again. When I was what the Brits’ call a
“motoring correspondent,” my interest was cars, whether with three or
four wheels. There were a lot of us writing about cars and motor
racing/rallying in Europe and Britain in the 1960s; postwar Europeans
were getting into cars for the first time in most families’ lives. We
were read whether it was the test drive of an exquisite new Zagato OSCA
coupe (built by the original Maserati brothers) or a boring Opel
sedan. But getting killed during a test ride? Since most of us had some
inkling of what we were doing astride a motorcycle or behind the wheel,
that would have been very bad luck.

• Time Magazine’s world.time.com website posted this howler. The original Time story purported to look at Oxford and Cambridge roles in Britain’s social mobility. Appended to the online story, Time’s correction has a lawyerly tone. Here it is at length and verbatim:

“This article has been changed. An earlier version stated
that Oxford University accepted ‘only one black Caribbean student’ in
2009, when in fact the university accepted one British black Caribbean
undergraduate who declared his or her ethnicity when applying to
Oxford.

“The article has also been amended to reflect the context
for comments made by British Prime Minister David Cameron on the number
of black students at Oxford. It has also been changed to reflect the
fact that in 2009 Oxford ‘held’ rather than ‘targeted’ 21 percent of its
outreach events at private schools, and that it draws the majority of
its non-private students from public schools with above average levels
of attainment, rather than ‘elite public schools.’

“An amendment was made to indicate that Office for Fair
Access director Les Ebdon has not imposed but intends to negotiate
targets with universities. It has been corrected to indicate that every
university-educated Prime Minister save Gordon Brown has attended Oxford
or Cambridge since 1937, rather than throughout history. The proportion
of Oxbridge graduates in David Cameron’s cabinet has been updated —
following the Prime Minister’s September reshuffle, the percentage rose
from almost 40 percent to two-thirds. Percentages on leading Oxbridge
graduates have been updated to reflect the latest figures.

“The article erred in stating that private school students
have ‘dominated’ Oxbridge for ‘centuries.’ In the 1970s, according to
Cambridge, admissions of state school students ranged from 62 percent to
68 percent, sinking down to around 50 percent in the 1980s. The article
has been amended to clarify that although only a small percentage of
British students are privately educated, they make up one-third of the
students with the requisite qualifications to apply to Oxbridge.

“The article erred in stating that Oxford and Cambridge
‘missed government admission targets’ for students from lower
socioeconomic backgrounds. Rather, the universities scored below
‘benchmarks’ for admission of students from lower socioeconomic
backgrounds which are calculated by the Higher Education Statistics
Agency, a non-governmental body. The article was amended to clarify the
point that Cambridge continues to run Sutton Trust summer schools.

“The article mistakenly suggested that the current U.K.
government had launched an ‘initiative to reform Oxbridge.’ There was no
official initiative, but rather a marked push by the government to
encourage change. The article referred to Cambridge and Oxford’s efforts
‘in the past two years’ to seek out underprivileged students. In fact,
their commitment is far more long-standing — programs to reach out to
underprivileged students have been operating at the two universities
since at least the mid-1990s.

“The article erred in suggesting that Cambridge had
protested state school targets, and in stating that it had ‘agreed to’
ambitious targets, rather than setting the targets themselves that were
then approved by the Office of Fair Access. The article has been amended
to clarify that there is debate over whether the ‘school effect’,
whereby state school students outperform private school students at
university, applies to those at the highest levels of achievement, from
which Oxford and Cambridge recruit.

“The article has been changed to correct the misstatement
that a lack of strong candidates from poor backgrounds is not the
concern of Oxford and Cambridge. The article has amended the phrase
‘Oxford and Cambridge’s myopic focus on cherry-picking the most
academically accomplished,’ to more fairly reflect the universities’
approach.”

• Until I read the Time correction above, I’d
forgotten one in which I was involved. A young reporter covered a
Saturday national church meeting in suburban Cincinnati at which
denominational leaders argued how to respond to homosexuals in the pews
and pulpits. This was when such a discussion was courageous, regardless
of the views expressed. I edited the story. It was a good, taut story
and it ran in a Sunday Enquirer. All hell broke loose. The
reporter attributed exactly the opposite views to each person quoted.
Instead of a forthright correction, I recall running a new, corrected
story plus the apology.

Demographics, overall numbers move in right direction

The federal government reported slightly better numbers in
January for Obamacare’s once-troubled online marketplaces, but Ohio and
the nation still fall far short of key demographic goals.

For the first time since HealthCare.gov’s glitch-ridden rollout, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) numbers show the amount of new enrollees actually beat projections.
About 1,146,100 signed up for Obamacare in January, slightly higher
than the 1,059,900 previously projected by the Centers for Medicare and
Medicaid Services.

More importantly, a small boost in young adults means 25
percent of 3.3 million enrollees across the nation and 21 percent of
60,000 Ohio enrollees were aged 18 to 34. That’s up 1 percentage point
for the nation and 2 percentage points for Ohio.

The White House previously said 39 percent of enrollees
need to be young adults, who tend to be healthier, to avoid driving up
health care costs by filling the insurance pool with older, sicker
people who typically use more resources.

HHS’ numbers only reflect people who signed up for a
health plan, not people who paid for their first premium, which is
widely considered the final crucial step to getting covered.

Mayor explains initiatives as he prepares for meeting with president

Mayor John Cranley plans to address the city’s long-term unemployment problems with a set of new initiatives, some of which could get support from the White House, he told CityBeat Thursday.

One of the initiatives is in direct response to President Barack
Obama’s call, heard by millions during the State of the Union Tuesday,
to get private companies on board with ending discrimination against the
long-term unemployed.

Specifically, Cranley says he helped get Procter &
Gamble and other local companies to agree to join the president’s
initiative.

“It wasn’t that hard to sell them on it, but they've got a
lot of things going on,” Cranley says. “Getting their attention and
focus on these things is one of the great powers that I have. I can help
ask people to give back in ways they just haven’t thought of before.”

With a visit to the White House planned for Friday,
Cranley hopes his quick response to Obama’s call could help the city
land future federal grants for programs that address long-term
unemployment.

As an example, Cranley points to a new White House
initiative that asks cities to develop innovative pilot programs that help
the long-term unemployed. The initiative will award federal grants, which Cranley estimates at a couple million
dollars per city, to the 10 best
proposals.

In preparation, the city is partnering with several local
organizations, including the Workforce Investment Board and United Way
of Greater Cincinnati, to develop a unique plan. How the city’s proposal
looks ultimately depends on the constraints set by the application
requirements, but Cranley cited more educational opportunities and
subsidies for companies that hire the long-term unemployed as two examples
cities might undertake.

The proposal, however it looks, would come in addition to
Cranley’s Hand Up Initiative, which he plans to fund through this year’s
city budget. As part of the initiative, the city will first partner
with Cincinnati Cooks, Cincinnati Works and Solid Opportunities for
Advancement and Retention (SOAR) to provide more job training
opportunities. Participants who graduate from those programs can then
apply to the Transitional Jobs Program, which provides short-term,
part-time work opportunities to people as they look for long-term,
full-time jobs.

The initiative will begin as a pilot program for the first two years,
but it could eventually expand with more partnerships and job training
opportunities, according to Cranley.

If successfully carried out, Cranley’s proposals could help break the long-term unemployment trends that keep so many Americans jobless in the first place.

In one study, Rand Ghayad of Northeastern University sent
out 4,800 fake resumes for 600 job openings. Ghayad found people who had
been out of work for six months or more very rarely got called back, even in comparison to applicants without work experience who were unemployed for shorter periods of time.

In other words, diminishing the discrimination on the employer’s side or ongoing joblessness on the potential employee’s side could be enough to land more people in jobs.

A proper solution to the issue could also go a long way to picking up the nation’s sluggish job market. By the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ estimate,
nearly 38 percent of the unemployed in December had been unemployed for
27 weeks or longer — the highest rate in six decades. In comparison, the
rate was below 20 percent prior to the recession.

“In the end, we want a city that isn’t just good for
future residents,” Cranley says, referencing the economic momentum in
Over-the-Rhine, downtown and uptown that might benefit future
Cincinnatians. “We need a city solution that grows the capacity and
builds the opportunities for residents who are already here and families
that are already dealing with poverty.”

President Barack Obama delivered the State of the Union speech
yesterday, outlining an ambitious progressive agenda that will be largely ignored and rebuked by Congress. But Obama promised at least
seven major policies that he can pursue without legislators, including a
$10.10-per-hour minimum wage for federal contractors and some action on
global warming. Obama’s full speech is viewable here, and the
Republican response is available here. The Associated Press fact checked
the speech here.

Ky. Gov. Steve Beshear says tolls are necessary to fund
the $2.6 billion Brent Spence Bridge project. Officials and executives
claim the bridge replacement is necessary to improve safety, traffic and
economic development through a key connector between Kentucky and Ohio,
but many Kentucky officials refuse to accept tolls to fund the new
bridge. But without federal funding to pay for the entire project,
leading Ohio and Kentucky officials say they have no other option.

There is a 32-point achievement gap in reading between
Ohio’s lower-income and higher-income fourth-graders, with higher-income
students coming out on top. The massive gap speaks to some of the
challenges brought on by income inequality as Ohio officials implement
the Third-Grade Reading Guarantee, which requires most Ohio
third-graders to test as “proficient” before they advance to the fourth
grade. Previous studies also found Ohio’s urban schools might be
unfairly evaluated and under-funded because the state doesn’t properly
account for poverty levels.

Attempting to move the Hamilton County Board of Elections
offices from downtown to Mount Airy, where only one bus line runs, could provoke a lawsuit from the NAACP, Board Chairman Tim Burke, a Democrat
who opposes the move, warned in an email to county commissioners. With
the Board of Elections split along party lines on the issue, the final
decision to move or not to move could come down to county commissioners
or Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted. CityBeat covered the issue in further detail here.

The reasoning: Because young adults tend to be healthier,
they can keep premiums down as sicker, older people claim health
insurance after the law opens up the health insurance market to more Americans.

Roughly 19 percent of nearly 40,000 Ohioans who signed up for Obamacare
were young adults between the ages of 18 and 34, according to the
report. Not only does that fall below the 39 percent goal, but it also
lags behind the national average of 24 percent.

In defense of the demographic numbers, HHS Secretary
Kathleen Sebelius wrote in a blog post Monday that enrollments are
demographically on pace with the 2007 experience of Massachusett, where state officials implemented health care reforms and systems similar to
Obamacare through Romneycare.

Indeed, a report from The New Republic found just
22.6 percent of enrollees through the third month of Romneycare were young adults. That number rose to 31.7
percent by the end of the law’s first year.

If Obamacare ends up at Massachusetts’ year-end rate, it will still
fall behind goals established by the White House. Still, Obamacare would be in
a considerably better place than it finds itself today.

The disappointing demographic figure comes after months of
technical issues snared HealthCare.gov’s launch. Most of the issues
were fixed in December, which allowed Obamacare to report considerably
better enrollment numbers by the end of the year.

It’s also unclear how many of those signing up for
Obamacare actually paid for their first premium, which is the final step to becoming enrolled in a health
insurance plan.

Given how Romneycare worked out in Massachusetts, it’s
possible signups for Obamacare could pick up before open enrollment
closes at the end of March. Based on previous statements from the White
House, Obamacare’s success could depend on it.

Ohio charter school have largely failed to live up to their promises, according to The Columbus Dispatch.
Charter schools were originally pursued by Ohio
lawmakers to help find a suitable alternative to the state’s struggling
urban public schools. But in the latest school report cards, charter
schools performed just as poorly as urban public schools. Charter
schools are allowed to run a profit and skip on certain state rules and
regulations, which was supposed to give them some leniency in
implementing successful academic models.

Obamacare will lower average health care costs
in Ohio’s individual market, according to a study from RAND
Corporation, a reputable think tank. Although premiums will rise as a
result of the law, the tax credits offered in Obamacare will be more
than enough to offset the increases. The numbers only apply to the
individual marketplaces; anyone who gets insurance through an employer
or public program falls under different rules and regulation. Still, the
findings are good news for Obamacare as the federal government aims to
insure 7 million people — and 2.7 million young, healthy adults among
those — to make the individual marketplaces work. As part of Obamacare,
states and the federal government will open online enrollment for new,
subsidized individual insurance plans on Oct. 1, and the plans will go
into effect at the start of next year.

The Medicaid expansion could insure more than 42,000 people in Hamilton County,
according to the Ohio Poverty Law Center. As part of Obamacare, states
are asked to expand their Medicaid programs to include anyone at or
below 138 percent of the federal poverty level ($15,856 for a
single-person household). If states accept, the federal government will
pay for the entire expansion for the first three years then phase down
its payments indefinitely to 90 percent of the expansion’s total cost.
Earlier this year, the Health Policy Institute of Ohio released an analysis
that found the Medicaid expansion would insure nearly half a million
Ohioans and save the state about $1.8 billion in the next decade.

Gov. John Kasich says he wants to slow down Attorney General Mike DeWine’s facial recognition program
and work with the Ohio legislature to review if changes are necessary.
Kasich compared the program to federal surveillance programs like the
NSA and FISA, which have come under scrutiny in the past few months
after leaks unveiled broader snooping and data collection of Americans’
private communications than previously expected. The facial recognition
program allows police officers and civilian employees to use a photo to
search databases for names and contact information; previously, law
enforcement officials needed a name or address to search such databases.
The program was criticized by the American Civil Liberties Union
because knowledge of the program’s existence was withheld from the
public for two-plus months and an independent group never reviewed the
program’s privacy-protecting protocols.

Democratic City Council candidate Greg Landsman backed the second phase of the streetcar in a column Friday. The endorsement could be vital to the project’s future because Landsman is widely considered a favorite in this year’s City Council race.

JobsOhio’s leaders plan to launch a public relations offensive
to repair the agency’s image. The privatized
development agency has been criticized for its lack of transparency after media outlets uncovered that it was handing
out tax credits to companies with direct financial ties to JobsOhio
board members. Democrats argue the agency needs more transparency and
checks on its recommendations, while Republicans, who created the agency
to replace the Ohio Department of Development, claim the agency’s
privatized, secretive nature allows it to move more quickly with
job-creating development deals.

The University of Cincinnati was named public university of the year
by The Washington Center. The award recognizes UC for supporting
experiential education through its partnership with The Washington
Center, an independent academic organization that serves hundreds of
colleges and universities by providing internships and other
opportunities in Washington, D.C., for school credit.

Cincinnati-based Kroger is cutting health care benefits for employees’ spouses on Jan. 1, but the plan will also increase pay, stabilize the company’s pension fund and provide more benefits for part-time employees. Obamacare apparently played a role in the decision to cut spousal benefits, but Kroger says the most influential factor was rising health care costs all around the nation — a trend that has been ongoing for decades.

Here is
a visualization of the urban heat island effect, which will make cities
warm up much faster as global warming continues.

Could you survive the end of the universe? io9 tackles the question here.

Individuals’ premiums will rise, but tax credits will more than make up for the increase

The Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) will lead to an
increase in Ohio’s raw health care premiums, but the increase will be
more than offset by the law’s tax credits, according to an Aug. 29 study from the RAND Corporation, a reputable think tank.

Specifically, health care premiums will rise to an average
of $5,312 under Obamacare in 2016. Without the law, premiums would
reach an average of $3,973 that year.

But when Obamacare’s tax credits are plugged in, the
average Ohio individual will only pay a premium of $3,131 — $842 less
than an individual Ohioan would pay without the law.

The tax credits will be available to individuals between 100 percent ($11,490 in annual income) and 400 percent of the federal poverty level ($45,960 in annual income). The subsidies will be smaller for
higher income levels, and the raw premium will vary depending on the insurance plan, so the premium and subsidy numbers don’t apply perfectly across the board.

The numbers also only apply to Ohioans in the individual
health insurance market. Under Obamacare, individuals will be able to
enroll for health insurance through an online marketplace. The majority of Americans who get health insurance through their
employers or public programs fall under different rules and regulations.

Obamacare will help more non-elderly Ohioans get health insurance. Without the law, 14.9 percent of
non-elderly individuals would lack insurance. With the law, only 6.2
percent will go without insurance.

RAND attributes the difference in insurance rates to tax credits, which make health insurance more affordable, and the individual
mandate, which requires certain Americans buy health insurance or pay a fine.

The numbers are good news for Obamacare, which needs a certain amount of young adults to enroll to avoid causing health care costs to skyrocket. Federal officials
say they expect to enroll 7 million people through individual
marketplaces, but 2.7 million must be young adults. That’s because
young adults tend to be healthier, which will help balance out sicker, older
people flowing into health care plans.

The online marketplaces are supposed to open enrollment on Oct. 1. The actual plans will go into effect on Jan. 1.

The White House released a list
of what cuts will be made in Ohio as part of mandatory spending cuts
set to kick in March 1, which are widely known as the sequester. Among other
changes, 26,000 civilian defense employees would be furloughed, 350
teacher and aide jobs would be put at risk due to $25.1 million in
education cuts and $6.9 million for clean air and water enforcement would
be taken away. President Barack Obama and Democrats have pushed to
replace the sequester with a plan that contains tax changes and budget
cuts, but they’ve failed to reach a compromise with Republicans, who
insist on a plan that only includes spending cuts.

Community Council President David White told WVXU that the
streets and sidewalks of the long-neglected neighborhood of Pendleton
were previously crumbling, but the Horseshoe Casino’s development has helped transform the area.
With Tax Increment Financing (TIF) funds, the city has budgeted $6
million in neighborhood development that has led to new trees, expanded
sidewalks and the potential for further developments that will appeal to
new businesses.

A surprise inspection
of the private prison owned by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA)
on Feb. 22 revealed higher levels of violence, inadequate staff, high
presence of gang activity, illegal substance use, frequent extortion and
theft, according to the report from the Correctional Institution
Inspection Committee (CIIC), Ohio’s nonpartisan prison watchdog. The
CIIC report found enormous increases in violence, with a 187.5-percent
increase in inmate-on-inmate violence and 305.9-percent in
inmate-on-staff violence between 2010 and 2012. Many of the problems are
being brought on by inadequate staff, according to the report. The
findings echo much of what privatization critics have been warning about
ever since Gov. John Kasich announced his plans to privatize the state
prison in 2011, which CityBeat covered in-depth here.

Kasich has highlighted funding increases in the education plan in his 2014-2015 budget proposal, but the plan also includes looser requirements for Ohio’s schools.
The plan will remove the teacher salary schedule from law, which sets a
minimum for automatic teacher pay increases for years of service and
educational accomplishments, such as obtaining a master’s degree. It
would also change the minimum school year from 182 days to 920 hours for
elementary students and 1,050 for high school students, giving more
flexibility to schools. CityBeat took an in-depth look at the governor’s budget and some of its education changes here.

Ohio Democrats want to change how the state picks its watchdog.
The governor currently appoints someone to the inspector general
position, but Democrats argue a bipartisan panel should be in charge of
making the pick.

Mayor Mark Mallory is in Spain to meet with CAF, the
company constructing the cars for Cincinnati’s streetcar project. Streetcar opponents, including mayoral candidate John
Cranley, say the cars are being built too early, but the city says it needs the time to build the cars, test them, burn the tracks and
train staff in the cars’ use. CityBeat covered the streetcar and how it relates to the 2013 mayoral race here.

The amount of Ohio prisoners returning to prison after being released hit a new low of 28.7 percent in 2009.
The numbers, which are calculated over a three-year period, indicate an
optimistic trend for the state’s recidivism statistics even before Gov. John
Kasich’s sentencing reform laws were signed into law.

Cincinnati’s real estate brokers say the city manager’s parking plan will revitalize Downtown’s retail scene
by using funds from semi-privatizing Cincinnati’s parking assets to
renovate Tower Place Mall and build a 30-story apartment tower with a
parking garage and grocery store.

Media musings from Cincinnati and beyond

• Giovanna Chirri, the veteran Vaticanista who understood
the pope’s Latin, broke the news that he’d just announced his
resignation. She works for the Italian news agency, ANSA. Her skill
recalled Ernest Sackler at Rome’s UPI bureau when I was a
photojournalist stringer during John XXIII’s papacy. Ernest truly
understood Vatican Latin well enough to turn it into flowing English;
colleagues spoke of him with awe.

• I’m grateful to the Enquirer for running a story on Sen.
Rand Paul’s response to the State of the Union Message. It wasn’t on
NPR or any other network that I could find. His Washington office did
not respond to my question of whether the Kentucky Republican offered his
remarks to any broadcasters/cable networks.

• Tens of millions of Americans will become eligible for
subsidized medical care under Obama’s Affordable Care Act. Who’s going
to treat them? I haven’t seen that in the news. And while reporters are
working out that story, ask how the required additional primary care
physicians will pay off college and medical school debts on the salaries
that will be paid to their specialties.

• And once journalists dig into the supply of physicians
to handle Medicaid expansion, I hope they’ll ask who’s going to staff
quality preschool education for every American child. Obama can be
aspirational, but we’re not talking about minimum wage diaper changers.
Early learning centers require trained pre-school educators. And while
they’re at it, reporters should ask where these new early childhood
educators will train and who’s going pick up the tab. After all, they’ll
never repay college loans on day care wages.

• Maybe I missed it in the admiring coverage of our
government killing American Islamists abroad with drone rocket attacks: What prevents Obama from killing Americans in this country with drone
strikes? None of the news stories or commentaries I’ve read or heard
addressed that point.

There would be no shortage of targets. Wouldn’t the
sheriff have loved a drone-launched missile to kill Christopher Dorner,
the rogue ex-LAPD cop? That might have spared the deputy whom Dorner
killed during the flaming finale in the San Bernardino mountains. And
what prevents our increasingly militarized police from using their own
armed drones?

Imagine what authorities could have done with armed drones during earlier, infamous encounters:

A missile fired at armed members of the American Indian
Movement at Wounded Knee, S.D., could have avenged inept, vain
and foolish George Armstrong Custer and FBI agents killed in the 1973
siege.

No feds would have died if a drone-launched missile
incinerated Randy Weaver’s family with during its deadly 1992
confrontation with feds at Ruby Ridge, Idaho.

David Koresh and the Branch Davidian religious sect were
incinerated by the feds’ 1993 armored assault in Texas. That would have
been a perfect photo op for a domestic drone attack.

• Sometimes, “national security” is the rationale for requested or commanded self-censorship, even when secrets aren’t secret.

For instance, British editors held stories about Prince
Harry until he returned the first time from Afghanistan. However, an
Australian women’s magazine reported he was in combat. The non-secret
was a secret because no one paid attention.

More recently, the new U.S. drone base in Saudi Arabia was
supposed to be a secret. Obama officials asked major news media to hold
the story and they agreed. National security, you know.

But it wasn’t a secret. Washington Post blogger Erik
Wemple said Fox News already had reported U.S. plans to build the
facility in Sept. 2011. Three months before that, the Times of
London reported construction of the Saudi drone base.

When the New York Times broke the agreement and reported
the Saudi drone base, everyone jumped on the story. Now, the Times, the
Post and AP are trying to explain why they kept the non-secret from us.

• Gone are the days when senior Israeli government
officials could call in top editors and broadcasters and tell them what
they could not report. Last week, a tsunami of technology overwhelmed
official Israeli efforts to censor the story of Prisoner X. Israeli
journalists were not to report his existence or mention the censorship
order. National security, you know. However, an Australian network named
an Aussie as Prisoner X and said he reportedly committed suicide three
years ago in an Israeli prison. Social media and the online world took
it from there: "Aussie recruited by Israeli spy agency dies in Israeli
prison." Israel dropped efforts to censor the Prisoner X story and is
issuing official statements about the case.

• San Bernardino’s sheriff asked journalists to quit
tweeting from the final gunfight with former LAPD cop Christopher
Dorner. Bizarre. If authorities feared Dorner would gain tactical
information, they misread his situation: Dorner was surrounded in a
mountain cabin, tear gas was being lobbed in and men outside were
trying to shoot him. He probably was too busy to read tweets. Moreover,
only one reporter was close enough to tweet anything remotely useful to
anyone. Most reporters initially or finally ignored the sheriff.

The tweet issue first arose during the 2008 Muslim
terrorist attack on Mumbai when invaded the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. Some
authorities reportedly feared accomplices outside were reading news
media tweets and forwarding tactical information about police and army
movements to gunmen inside. I don’t remember if anyone asked reporters
to quit tweeting.

• A new poll says Fox hit an alltime low for the four
years Public Policy Polling has tracked trust/distrust among TV
networks: 41 percent trust Fox, 46 percent do not. The poll didn’t find anything for
other networks to brag about. Only PBS had more “trust” than “distrust”
among viewers: 52 percent trust, 29 percent don’t trust. The poll questioned 800
voters by telephone from Jan. 31 to Feb. 3.

• Garry Wills’ new book, Why Priests, sets out to debunk
Catholicism’s dearest dogmas and doctrines concerning priests, bishops
and the papacy. NPR’s Diane Rehm gave him an hour last week to say why
Catholic ordained clergy are an unnecessary accretion. Then she asked an
outgunned parish priest from the Washington, D.C. area for a rebuttal.
If she really wanted a lively, informed argument, there is no shortage
of priest-scholars who could have matched Wills’ credentials and talents
as an historian. It was unfair and cringe-worthy.

• It’s touchy when an unpleasantry is brought up in an
obit: a long forgiven conviction, a “love child,” whatever. More often,
predictably awkward moments are omitted in the spirit of de mortuis nil
nisi bonum. Here’s HuffingtonPost on a full-blown omission in the recent
obit on former New York mayor and mensch Ed Koch:

“The New York Times revised its Friday obituary
. . . after several observers noticed that it lacked any mention of his
controversial record on AIDS. The paper's obituary, written by longtime
staffer Robert D. MacFadden, weighed in at 5,500 words. Yet, in the
first version of the piece, AIDS was mentioned exactly once, in a
passing reference to ‘the scandals and the scourges of crack cocaine,
homelessness and AIDS.’ The Times also prepared a 22-minute video on
Koch's life that did not mention AIDS. This struck many as odd; after
all, Koch presided over the earliest years of AIDS, and spent many years
being targeted
by gay activists who thought he was not doing nearly enough to stop the
spread of the disease. Legendary writer and activist Larry Kramer called Koch ‘a murderer of his own people’ because the mayor was widely known as a closeted gay man.”

• New York’s Ed Koch admired Wall Street Journal reporter
Danny Pearl’s recorded last words before Muslim terrorists beheaded him.
Koch had Pearl’s affirmation of faith engraved on his own tombstone in
Manhattan’s Trinity Church graveyard: “My father is Jewish, my mother is
Jewish, I am Jewish.”

• A former student reporter rarely rates an obit in the
national media, but Annette Buchanan wasn’t ordinary. In the mid-1960s,
she refused a court order to name sources for her story about student
marijuana use on the University of Oregon campus. Her story ran in the
Oregon Daily Emerald, the campus paper. No shield law protected her
promise of confidentiality. The Emerald said she was fined the maximum
$300 and the state supreme court affirmed her contempt of court
conviction. That led to the creation of Oregon’s shield law for
journalists. She died recently.

• An unresolved First Amendment issue is whether bloggers
can be protected by state shield laws that allow journalists to keep
sources secret. The latest case is from New Jersey. Poynter.com
said blogger Tina Renna refused to identify government officials whom
she said misused county generators after Hurricane Sandy. Union County
prosecutors demanded the 16 names, saying Renna wasn’t a journalist
protected by New Jersey’s shield law because she’s been involved in
politics, her blog is biased and she’s often critical of county
government.

The Newark Star-Ledger took her side. It said shield law protection “shouldn’t
hinge on whether someone is a professional, nonpartisan or even
reliable journalist. It’s a functional test: Does Renna gather
information that’s in the public interest and publish it? Yes.” Renna “can
be a little wild, she’s not the same as a professional reporter and she
drives local officials crazy. But part of democracy is putting up with
Tina Renna.” A court will probe whether Renna is a journalist as defined
by the state shield law; that is, whether bloggers can be included by
analogy under protected electronic news media.

• Few ledes — introductory sentences in news stories — are
as lame as those saying the subject “doesn’t look” like some
stereotype. For years, it usually referred to a woman in an
unconventional (read men’s) occupation or pastime. “She didn’t look
like a steelworker . . . “ or, “You wouldn’t think a tiny blonde bagged a
deadly wild boar with a huge .44 magnum revolver.” Male subjects aren’t
immune, as in this lede from a recent Washington Post story: “Farmer
Hugh Bowman hardly looks the part of a revolutionary who stands in the
way of promising new biotech discoveries and threatens Monsanto’s
pursuit of new products . . . ”

What do revolutionaries look like? Lenin was pictured in
suit and tie. Gandhi wore a white, draped sari or dhoti, Mandela and
fellow ANC rebels often wore suits and ties. Young 1960s American and
French student rebels never wore suits and ties and needed haircuts.
Today’s young North African activists dress the same for class or a
demonstration.

“Doesn’t look like” wouldn’t even fit an androgynous male
model in the annual Victoria’s Secret fashion show. He’d be there
because he looks like a classic, young, leggy “angel.”

• Have you noticed how hurricanes, floods, blizzards and
tornadoes are morphing from evidence of climate change into photo ops?
News media see them as so common that little reporting is required
beyond images and stories of hardship: shoppers hoarding sliced white
bread, downed trees and shattered homes, marooned airline passengers and
days without power. Maybe there’s the throwaway quote from some
climatologist about change affecting weather, but for the most part,
that’s it. I’m betting this deliberate ignorance is a Republican Party
plot to show that increasingly frequent, dangerous weather reflects the
Intelligent Design that gave us dino-riding cavemen a few thousand years
ago.

• The Enquirer devoted Page 1 to a dramatic OMG! graphic
and story suggesting Cincinnati was terrible because it had no black
candidate for mayor. An accompanying list of movers and shakers had few
blacks. The presentation suggested the all-white mayoral contest meant
amiss in a city where whites are the largest minority. However, whites
and blacks told reporters that leadership rather than color was foremost
among attributes they sought in a mayor. Moreover, with so many African
Americans in visible leadership roles in the city, having a black mayor
succeed a black mayor was less of an issue than the paper suggested.

President Barack Obama gave his State of the Union speech
yesterday. During the speech, Obama outlined fairly liberal proposals for the economy, climate change, gun control and immigration. He also suggested raising the minimum wage to $9 and attaching it to rising cost of living standards. The Washington Post analyzed the proposals here. To watch a bunch of old people clap too much while the
president outlines policy proposals that will likely never pass a
gridlocked Congress, click here.

The Archdiocese of Cincinnati is standing firm
in its firing of Purcell Marian High School administrator Mike Moroski.
The termination came after Moroski publicly stated his support for
same-sex marriage on his blog — a position that contradicts the Catholic
Church’s teachings. CityBeat covered Moroski’s case in this week’s news story, and gay marriage was covered more broadly in a previous in-depth story.

Vice Mayor Roxanne Qualls wants to stop
the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) from selling
768 housing units in Walnut Hills, Avondale and Millvale. Qualls says
the sale is “eerily similar” to a sale dating back to 2007, which
resulted in dropping property values and blighted buildings. She argues local buyers should get a chance to take up the properties before HUD makes the sale to a New York company.

State Treasurer Josh Mandel is up to his old tricks again. In a letter to Ohio legislators Monday, Mandel, a Republican, opposed the Medicaid expansion,
claiming, “There is no free money.” But for the state, the Medicaid
expansion is essentially free money. The federal government will cover
all the costs of the expansion for the first three years, then phase down to paying 90 percent of the costs by 2020 — essentially, free
money. Gov.
John Kasich, another Republican, has backed the Medicaid expansion, claiming it makes
financial sense in the long term. In 2012, Mandel lost the race for Ohio’s Senate seat after he ran
a notoriously dishonest campaign against U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown.

Financing details for the Brent Spence Bridge are due in March.
The details will provide much-wanted information for local residents
cautious about the new tolling scheme, which will help pay for the bridge’s
reconstruction.

Cincinnati officials and residents celebrated
the work completed near the Horseshoe Casino at an event yesterday.
Mayor Mark Mallory highlighted the infrastructure improvements made to
accommodate the casino, calling the work a successful collaboration
between city government, the casino and residents.

The Ohio Resource Center has a new website for K-12 digital content. The website, ilearnOhio, is supposed to provide parents and students with the tools needed for online distance learning.

Toby Keith’s I Love This Bar & Grill is being sued
for not paying rent. The restaurant claims it’s financially viable, but
it’s holding the rent in escrow after its landlord allegedly violated the
leasing agreement. The establishment was one of the first to open at
The Banks.

A public Ohio school district is fighting a lawsuit in order to keep its portrait of Jesus.
The school district claims the portrait is owned by a student club and
is “private speech,” but opponents argue the portrait violates
separation of church and state.

Update on the Alamo situation at Tower Place Mall: Only one tenant remains.

Americans expect a human mission to Mars in the next 20 years, but that’s probably because they don’t know how little funding NASA gets.

An asteroid will barely miss
Earth on Feb. 15. If it were to hit, it would generate the explosive
equivalent of 2,500 kilotons of TNT. In comparison, the nuclear bomb
that hit Hiroshima during World War 2 generated a measly equivalent of
17 kilotons of TNT.

Media musings from Cincinnati and beyond

Be suspicious of statistics that suggest a reporter
doesn’t understand, doesn’t care or knowingly isn’t telling us
everything the numbers do. For instance, we have tens of thousands of
firearm deaths every year in our country. Uncritical reporting suggests
these are homicides that buybacks or proposed federal gun controls could
prevent or reduce. Nope. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
said there were 31,672 firearm deaths recorded in 2010, the last year
for which complete statistics are posted. Of those, 19,392 or 61 percent
were suicides, not homicides. The remaining 39 percent included accidents, fatal encounters with police, etc.

• Critical thinking was in short supply at the Senate
Judiciary Hearing where gun control foes testified. It’s sort of like
using a faux quote by Hitler to prove gun registration leads to
confiscation, which leads to socialism or worse. Gayle Trotter of the
Independent Women’s Forum told senators that “guns make women safer” and
a ban on assault-style weapons with high-capacity magazines would
endanger women.

To illustrate her case, Trotter cited 18-year-old Sarah
McKinley’s successful defense against an armed intruder near Blanchard,
Okla. Police there told CityBeat that she killed him with a
12-gauge pump shotgun, a classic hunting weapon owned by millions of
Americans. That was a good choice for McKinley but an unfortunate
example for Trotter; no one is suggesting that shotguns be included in
proposed gun controls.

Then, as if to prove that fewer Americans are hunting or
serving in the military and know what they’re talking about (also see
below), MSNBC mistakenly said she used a rifle. ABC News was no smarter:
It had her reenact the shooting with a double-barreled shotgun.

McKinley’s single-barrel pump shotgun was taken as
evidence in the homicide, probably to be returned when her claim of
self-defense is affirmed. Meanwhile, Guns Save Lives, a nonprofit, sent
her a similar, replacement shotgun.

Not only does Oklahoma allow lethal force for self-defense
inside a person’s home, but McKinley asked the 911 operator what she
could do to protect herself and her child. The dead intruder’s companion
reportedly told police the intruders were after prescription
painkillers that they assumed McKinley’s husband left when he died a
week earlier from cancer.

• A secret shooter? After Obama’s comments to the New
Republic about having fired a gun, the White House released a photo of
the president on the Camp David retreat skeet range. Wearing protective
glasses and ear protection, he’s firing a shotgun at the 4-5/16 inch
flying clay discs (pigeons) last August. "Yes, in fact, up at Camp David, we do skeet shooting all the time," Obama told the New Republic. "Not the girls, but oftentimes guests of mine go up there." However, the AP story accompanying the skeet shooting photo in Sunday’s Enquirer
mistakenly says he’s firing a rifle. I’m not sure whether Obama used an
over-and-under shotgun, but it certainly didn’t look like a rifle. That
inexplicable clanger escaped AP and Enquirer editing despite our
unprecedented national debate over certain types of firearms. NRA
pooh-poohed Obama’s comments and photo, saying it changes nothing in NRA
opposition to greater gun control.

• John Kerry drew scorn in 2004 after he was photographed
with Ted Strickland and others with just-shot geese in an eastern Ohio
cornfield. Possibly recalling that ill-conceived effort to bond with
hunters, Obama didn’t release his skeet shooting photo before the
election last year. Kerry’s goose hunting was ridiculed as a dumb photo
op, especially because Kerry borrowed the farmer’s hunting outfit and
double-barreled shotgun for the day. Whether Kerry bagged any additional
rural voters was unclear; Bush won Ohio.

• I began contributing to the new National Catholic Reporter in the mid-’60s when I started covering religion at the Minneapolis Star. I freelanced for NCR when I had that same assignment at the Enquirer. A privately owned, independent weekly based in Kansas City, Mo., NCR was a voice of Roman Catholics who embraced the spirit as well as the documents of the Second Vatican Council.

Traditional churchmen had little reason to love NCR.
It was a pain in the ass and collection basket. It reported the flight
of clergy and nuns, often into marriage. Jason Berry pioneered reporting
of priestly child abuse. Penny Lernoux covered Latin American death
squads and links between murderous reactionaries and the church. Murders
of nuns, priests and bishops who embraced liberation theology and the
church’s “preferential option for the poor” received extensive, probing
coverage.

The bishop of Kansas City and a former diocesan editor,
Robert W. Finn, recently joined predecessors’ fruitless condemnations of
NCR’s journalism. In a letter to the diocese praising official
church media, Finn was “sorry to say, my attention has been drawn once
again to the National Catholic Reporter. … In the last months I
have been deluged with emails and other correspondence from Catholics
concerned about the editorial stances of the Reporter: officially
condemning Church teaching on the ordination of women, insistent
undermining of Church teaching on artificial contraception and sexual
morality in general, lionizing dissident theologies while rejecting
established Magisterial (official) teaching, and a litany of other
issues.

“My predecessor bishops have taken different approaches to
the challenge. Bishop Charles Helmsing in October of 1968 issued a
condemnation of the National Catholic Reporter and asked the publishers to remove the name ‘Catholic’ from their title — to no avail. From my perspective, NCR’s positions against authentic Church teaching and leadership have not changed trajectory in the intervening decades.

“When early in my tenure I requested that the paper submit their bona fides
as a Catholic media outlet in accord with the expectations of Church
law, they declined to participate indicating that they considered
themselves an ‘independent newspaper which commented on “things
Catholic.” ’ At other times, correspondence has seemed to reach a dead
end.

“In light of the number of recent expressions of concern, I
have a responsibility as the local bishop to instruct the Faithful
about the problematic nature of this media source which bears the name
‘Catholic.’ While I remain open to substantive and respectful discussion
with the legitimate representatives of NCR, I find that my ability to
influence the National Catholic Reporter toward fidelity to the
Church seems limited to the supernatural level. For this we pray: St.
Francis DeSales (patron of journalists), intercede for us.”

• Rarely have I seen such a neat dismissal of creationism
and defense of evolution as the following by 19th century skeptic Robert
Ingersoll. It’s quoted in a review of The Great Agnostic, a biography of Ingersoll, in the neo-conservative Weekly Standard:

“I would rather belong to that race that commenced a
skull-less vertebrate and produced Shakespeare, a race that has before
it an infinite future, with an angel of progress leaning from the far
horizon, beckoning men forward, upward, and onward forever — I had
rather belong to such a race … than to have sprung from a perfect pair
upon which the Lord has lost money every moment from that day to this.”

• The Weekly Standard also published “A teacher’s
Plea: The GOP shouldn’t write off educators.” Eloquent Colleen Hyland
speaks beyond partisanship for her vocation and colleagues in her Jan.
21 essay. Among other things, she hopes to shake Republican/conservative
ideologues out of their animus toward public school teachers and their
unions. Among her points: Hhateful generalizations about teachers and
their desire for a living wage also degrades women.

• I didn’t know Kevin Ash and I’m not a rider but I read his motorcycle reviews in London’s Daily Telegraph
for years. Details of his death in South Africa are unclear, but he
died during the media show testing the new BMW R1200GS motorcycle. His
informed, passionate writing was a delight for itself, even if I never
thought to get on a two-wheeler again. When I was what the Brits’ call a
“motoring correspondent,” my interest was cars, whether with three or
four wheels. There were a lot of us writing about cars and motor
racing/rallying in Europe and Britain in the 1960s; postwar Europeans
were getting into cars for the first time in most families’ lives. We
were read whether it was the test drive of an exquisite new Zagato OSCA
coupe (built by the original Maserati brothers) or a boring Opel
sedan. But getting killed during a test ride? Since most of us had some
inkling of what we were doing astride a motorcycle or behind the wheel,
that would have been very bad luck.

• Time Magazine’s world.time.com website posted this howler. The original Time story purported to look at Oxford and Cambridge roles in Britain’s social mobility. Appended to the online story, Time’s correction has a lawyerly tone. Here it is at length and verbatim:

“This article has been changed. An earlier version stated
that Oxford University accepted ‘only one black Caribbean student’ in
2009, when in fact the university accepted one British black Caribbean
undergraduate who declared his or her ethnicity when applying to
Oxford.

“The article has also been amended to reflect the context
for comments made by British Prime Minister David Cameron on the number
of black students at Oxford. It has also been changed to reflect the
fact that in 2009 Oxford ‘held’ rather than ‘targeted’ 21 percent of its
outreach events at private schools, and that it draws the majority of
its non-private students from public schools with above average levels
of attainment, rather than ‘elite public schools.’

“An amendment was made to indicate that Office for Fair
Access director Les Ebdon has not imposed but intends to negotiate
targets with universities. It has been corrected to indicate that every
university-educated Prime Minister save Gordon Brown has attended Oxford
or Cambridge since 1937, rather than throughout history. The proportion
of Oxbridge graduates in David Cameron’s cabinet has been updated —
following the Prime Minister’s September reshuffle, the percentage rose
from almost 40 percent to two-thirds. Percentages on leading Oxbridge
graduates have been updated to reflect the latest figures.

“The article erred in stating that private school students
have ‘dominated’ Oxbridge for ‘centuries.’ In the 1970s, according to
Cambridge, admissions of state school students ranged from 62 percent to
68 percent, sinking down to around 50 percent in the 1980s. The article
has been amended to clarify that although only a small percentage of
British students are privately educated, they make up one-third of the
students with the requisite qualifications to apply to Oxbridge.

“The article erred in stating that Oxford and Cambridge
‘missed government admission targets’ for students from lower
socioeconomic backgrounds. Rather, the universities scored below
‘benchmarks’ for admission of students from lower socioeconomic
backgrounds which are calculated by the Higher Education Statistics
Agency, a non-governmental body. The article was amended to clarify the
point that Cambridge continues to run Sutton Trust summer schools.

“The article mistakenly suggested that the current U.K.
government had launched an ‘initiative to reform Oxbridge.’ There was no
official initiative, but rather a marked push by the government to
encourage change. The article referred to Cambridge and Oxford’s efforts
‘in the past two years’ to seek out underprivileged students. In fact,
their commitment is far more long-standing — programs to reach out to
underprivileged students have been operating at the two universities
since at least the mid-1990s.

“The article erred in suggesting that Cambridge had
protested state school targets, and in stating that it had ‘agreed to’
ambitious targets, rather than setting the targets themselves that were
then approved by the Office of Fair Access. The article has been amended
to clarify that there is debate over whether the ‘school effect’,
whereby state school students outperform private school students at
university, applies to those at the highest levels of achievement, from
which Oxford and Cambridge recruit.

“The article has been changed to correct the misstatement
that a lack of strong candidates from poor backgrounds is not the
concern of Oxford and Cambridge. The article has amended the phrase
‘Oxford and Cambridge’s myopic focus on cherry-picking the most
academically accomplished,’ to more fairly reflect the universities’
approach.”

• Until I read the Time correction above, I’d
forgotten one in which I was involved. A young reporter covered a
Saturday national church meeting in suburban Cincinnati at which
denominational leaders argued how to respond to homosexuals in the pews
and pulpits. This was when such a discussion was courageous, regardless
of the views expressed. I edited the story. It was a good, taut story
and it ran in a Sunday Enquirer. All hell broke loose. The
reporter attributed exactly the opposite views to each person quoted.
Instead of a forthright correction, I recall running a new, corrected
story plus the apology.